The Last Ball

The last ball of training belonged to nobody. It sat under the far sideline fence while the rest of the panel carried cones towards the shed and discussed the serious question of whose turn it was to buy milk.

Eoin saw it and kept walking. He had missed three frees in the practice match, all from the same patch of ground, and the sensible thing was to leave them there with the rain.

“You forgot one,” Mark said.

“I was delegating.”

Mark jogged to the fence, lifted the sliotar on the run and sent it back with a low strike. Eoin caught it against his chest.

“One more,” Mark said. “Then the milk crisis.”

The others disappeared into the shed. Eoin placed the ball on the wet grass. Mark stood behind the goal with his hands in his jacket pockets, a terrible umpire and the only audience left.

Eoin struck. The ball bent outside the right post.

“Wide,” Mark called.

“Your commitment to accuracy is moving.”

“Again.”

For six weeks Mark had been saying again. After training. After Eoin dropped a handpass. After he arrived late because he had sat in the car rehearsing an explanation nobody had requested. Again meant the mistake was ordinary. Again meant there would still be a place in the next drill.

The second free hit the post. The third crossed above Mark's head.

“Point,” Mark said, raising one arm.

Eoin collected the ball. “You could use both flags, for realism.”

“Budget cuts.”

The floodlights clicked off in pairs. They stood in the last bright rectangle, the pitch beyond it turning blue.

“You going Saturday?” Mark asked.

The club dinner. Eoin had bought a ticket and spent a week constructing reasons not to use it. He knew the room: round tables, county-final photographs, questions about girlfriends delivered with no cruelty at all. Sometimes no cruelty was the hardest thing to answer.

“Maybe.”

“That's not an answer.”

“It's the traditional answer before an Irish social event.”

Mark nodded. “Fair. I'm bringing Liam.”

Eoin looked down at the sliotar in his palm. Mark had mentioned a Liam before—cinema, a broken washing machine, a dog that ate a glove—but never explained the category. Eoin had not asked.

“Your brother?”

“My boyfriend.” Mark said it as if correcting the time of the throw-in. “He thinks hurling is a system for producing unnecessary timber.”

“He's not entirely wrong.”

“Will you come?”

Eoin rolled the ball between his fingers. A door had opened without anybody dragging him through it.

“Yeah,” he said. “I might bring someone too.”

Mark did not ask who. He only bent, picked up Eoin's helmet and passed it over.

“Good. But tell them the dessert is usually poor.”

From the shed, somebody shouted that the kettle had boiled.

They walked in together. At the door Eoin stopped, turned and threw the sliotar high into the dark. Mark caught it one-handed.

“Last ball,” Eoin said.

“Until Thursday.”

That was the thing about a club, Eoin thought. There was nearly always another session, another cup of tea, another chance to say the ordinary sentence. He followed Mark inside before the light behind them went out.

In the shed, somebody pushed a mug towards him and asked whether he wanted sugar. The conversation moved immediately to Saturday's team, a missing bag of bibs and the price of diesel. Mark took the chair opposite without signalling that anything important had happened. Eoin wrapped both hands around the mug. He had expected honesty to change the room. Instead, the room made space and carried on.

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